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The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
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Publisher: Harper Pub Date: Jul 7 2009
ISBN-10: 0060175311
ISBN-13: 978-0060175313
Chick Lit / Literary FictionCheck AvailabilityKnown for her beloved Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells debuts an entirely new cast of
characters in this shining stand-alone novel about the pull of first
love, the power of life, and the human heart's vast capacity for
healing. In the small river town of La
Luna, Calla bursts into being, a force of nature as luminous as the
flower she is named for. Under the loving light of the Moon Lady, the
feminine force that will guide and protect her throughout her life,
Calla enjoys a blissful childhood - until it is cut short. Her mother,
M'Dear, a woman of rapture and love, teaches Calla compassion, and
passes on to her the art of healing through the humble womanly art of
"fixing hair." At her mother's side, Calla further learns that this
same touch of hands on the human body can quiet her own soul. It is
also on the banks of the La Luna River that Calla encounters sweet,
succulent first love, with a boy named Tuck. But when Tuck
leaves Calla with a broken heart, she transforms hurt into inspiration
and heads for the wild and colorful city of New Orleans. In that extravagant big river city,
she finds her destiny-and comes to understand fully the power of her
"healing hands" to change lives and soothe pain, including her own.
When Tuck reappears years later, he presents her with an offer that is
colored by the memories of lost love. But who knows how Calla Lily, a
"daughter of the Moon Lady," will respond?
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The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert
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Publication Date: Mar 10 2009
ISBN-10: 0743291301
ISBN-13: 978-0743291309
Literary Fiction Check Availability From the author of the critically acclaimed story collection How This Night Is Different comes a dark, arresting, fearlessly funny story of one young woman's terminal illness. In The Book of Dahlia,
Elisa Albert walks a dazzling line between gravitas and irreverence,
mining an exhilarating blend of skepticism and curiosity, compassion
and candor, high and low culture.
Meet Dahlia Finger: twenty-nine,
depressed, whip-smart, occasionally affable, bracingly honest,
resolutely single, and perennially unemployed. She spends her days
stoned in front of the TV, watching the same movies repeatedly, like "a
form of prayer." But Dahlia's so-called life is upended by an
aggressive, inoperable brain tumor.
Stunned and uncomprehending,
Dahlia must work toward reluctant emotional reckoning with the aid of a
questionable self-help guide. She obsessively revisits the myriad
heartbreaks, disappointments, rages, and regrets that comprise the
story of her life -- from her parents' haphazard Israeli courtship to
her kibbutz conception; from the role of beloved daughter and little
sister to that of abandoned, suicidal adolescent; from an affluent
childhood in Los Angeles to an aimless existence in the gentrified
wilds of Brooklyn; from a girl with "options" to a girl with none --
convinced that cancer struck because she herself is somehow at fault. With
her take-no-prisoners perspective, her depressive humor, and her
extreme vulnerability, Dahlia Finger is an unforgettable anti-heroine.
This staggering portrait of one young woman's life and death confirms
Elisa Albert as a "witty, incisive" (Variety) and even "wonder-inducing" writer (Time Out New York).
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Falling by Anne Simpson
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Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Publication Date: Feb 12 2008
ISBN-10: 0771080905
ISBN-13: 978-0771080906 Literary Fiction Check Availability
On a late summer day along the shores of Nova Scotia, a young woman
makes a mistake that will claim her life, while at the other end of the
beach her brother, Damian, is unaware that she is drowning. Beginning
with this shattering event, Anne Simpson's mesmerizing novel unfolds in
unexpected ways.
A year after the accident, Damian and his
mother, Ingrid, travel to Niagara Falls to scatter Lisa's ashes and to
visit Ingrid's estranged brother, once a famous daredevil of the Falls,
now blind, and his mentally disabled son. But old wounds and new
misunderstandings soon collide. Damian, burdened by guilt, finds solace
in an intense relationship with a girl he first glimpses in a tattoo
parlour. A runaway with dreams of New York City, Jasmine has her own
reasons for wanting to escape the past. Meanwhile, Ingrid, having
reluctantly returned to her childhood home, finds herself at odds with
her brother and besieged by memories. As the summer progresses, each of
them becomes caught in the pull of the past - until an act of
recklessness shocks them into a new course for the future.
In
startling, luminous language, Anne Simpson captures both the natural
beauty and tawdry eccentricity of Niagara Falls, while evoking the
elemental bonds that tie us to the ones we love. By turns
uncompromising and heartbreakingly tender, Falling is a riveting story of ordinary people poised on the knife-edge of grief and hope.
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Glass of Time by Michael Cox
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Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Publication Date: Oct 14 2008
ISBN-10: 0771023073
ISBN-13: 978-0771023071
Mystery / HistoricalCheck Availability
A page-turning late-Victorian mystery by a master, The Glass of Time is for fans of The Meaning of Night and for readers new to Michael Cox alike.
Picking up the lives of characters from the first novel some twenty years later, The Glass of Time
begins in 1876. Nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives from
Paris at the great country house of Evenwood to become lady's maid to
the 26th Baroness Tansor, the former Miss Emily Carteret. But Esperanza
is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the
mysterious "Madame," to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has
concealed for decades, and to set right a past injustice which -
although Esperanza does not know it - is intimately linked with her own
future as well as her past.
Gradually, those secrets are
revealed, and with them the true identities of nearly every character -
for it seems that no one in Esperanza's world is who she believes them
to be. She finds herself enmeshed in a complicated web of intrigue,
deceit, and murder that culminates in a devastating betrayal by those
she trusted most.
Richly textured and elegantly told, The Glass of Time
is a completely enveloping tale of identity, of the unexpected
consequences of hidden truths, and of what can happen when past
obsessions impose themselves on an unwilling present.
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Relentless by Dean Koontz
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Publisher: Bantam Publication Date: Jun 9 2009
ISBN-10: 0553807145
ISBN-13: 978-0553807141
Thriller / Suspense Check AvailabilityBestselling novelist Cullen "Cubby" Greenwich is a lucky man and he
knows it. He makes a handsome living doing what he enjoys. His wife,
Penny, a children's book author and illustrator, is the love of his
life. Together they have a brilliant six-year-old, Milo, affectionately
dubbed "Spooky," and a non-collie named Lassie, who's all but part of
the family. So Cubby knows he shouldn't let one bad review of
his otherwise triumphant new book get to him - even if it does appear in
the nation's premier newspaper and is penned by the much-feared,
seldom-seen critic, Shearman Waxx. Cubby knows the best thing to do is
ignore the gratuitously vicious, insulting, and inaccurate comments.
Penny knows it, even little Milo knows it. If Lassie could talk, she'd
tell Cubby to ignore them, too. Ignore Shearman Waxx and his
poison pen is just what Cubby intends to do. Until he happens to learn
where the great man is taking his lunch. Cubby just wants to get a look
at the mysterious recluse whose mere opinion can make or break a
career-or a life. But Shearman Waxx isn't what Cubby expects;
and neither is the escalating terror that follows what seemed to be an
innocent encounter. For Waxx gives criticism; he doesn't take it. He
has ways of dealing with those who cross him that Cubby is only
beginning to fathom. Soon Cubby finds himself in a desperate struggle
with a relentless sociopath, facing an inexorable assault on far more
than his life.
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Sunnyside by Glen David Gold
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Publisher: Knopf Publication Date: May 5 2009
ISBN-10: 0307270688
ISBN-13: 978-0307270689
Literary FictionCheck AvailabilityGlen David Gold, author of the best seller Carter Beats the Devil, now
gives us a grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of
Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate,
heartrending and darkly comic, that captures the moment when American
capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood
intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity. Sunnyside
opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted
in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary
delusion that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men:
Leland Wheeler, son of the world's last (and worst) Wild West star, as
he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black,
drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in
America's doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin
himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complications-studio moguls,
questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing
of all, his mother. The narrative is as rich and
expansive as the ground it covers, and it is cast with a dazzling
roster of both real and fictional characters: Mary Pickford, Douglas
Fairbanks, Adolph Zukor, Chaplin's (first) child bride, a thieving Girl
Scout, the secretary of the treasury, a lovesick film theorist, three
Russian princesses (gracious, nervous, and nihilist), a crew of
fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants moviemakers, legions of starstruck fans,
and Rin Tin Tin. |
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Publisher: Knopf Canada Publication Date: May 5 2009
ISBN-10: 0307397874
ISBN-13: 978-0307397874
Literary Fiction / Short StoriesCheck Availability
Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of six novels, including the international bestsellers The Remains of the Day (winner of the Booker Prize) and Never Let Me Go.
In this sublime story cycle, Ishiguro explores love, music and
the passage of time. This quintet ranges from Italian piazzas to the
Malvern Hills, a London flat to the "hush-hush floor" of an exclusive
Hollywood hotel. Along the way we meet young dreamers, café musicians
and faded stars, all at some moment of reckoning.
Gentle, intimate and witty, Nocturnes
is underscored by a haunting theme: the struggle to restoke life's
romance, even as relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.
Praise for Kazuo Ishiguro:
"His books are Zen gardens with no flowery metaphors, no wild, untamed weeds threatening - or allowed - to overrun the plot." -The Globe and Mail
"One
of our subtlest observers, a writer who takes enormous gambles, then
uses his superior gifts to manage the risk as tightly as possible." -The New York Times Book Review
"A master storyteller, in a class of his own making." -The Independent
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The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
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Publisher: Harper Collins Canada Publication Date: Jan 5 2006
ISBN-10: 0060791551
ISBN-13: 978-0060791551
Literary FictionIn this new novel, beloved bestselling author Elizabeth Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay,
leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's
house. In Sera Dubash's home, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in
which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is not
permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed
to drink. Yet despite being separated from each other by blood and
class, she and Sera find themselves bound by gender and shared life
experiences. Sera is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife
whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her
abusive marriage. A widow, she devotes herself to her family, spending
much of her time caring for her pregnant daughter, Dinaz, a
kindhearted, educated professional, and her charming and successful
son-in-law, Viraf. Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a
life of despair and loss, has worked in the Dubash household for more
than twenty years. Cursed by fate, she sacrifices all for her
beautiful, headstrong granddaughter, Maya, a university student whose
education -- paid for by Sera -- will enable them to escape the slums.
But when an unwed Maya becomes pregnant by a man whose identity she
refuses to reveal, Bhima's dreams of a better life for her
granddaughter, as well as for herself, may be shattered forever. Poignant and compelling, evocative and unforgettable, The Space Between Us
is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in
modern-day India and witnessed through two compelling and achingly real
women, the novel shows how the lives of the rich and the poor are
intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and vividly
captures how the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of
class and culture.
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The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners by Luanne Rice
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Publisher: Bantam Publication Date: Aug 4 2009
ISBN-10: 0553805142
ISBN-13: 978-0553805147 Romance / Family Saga Check Availability Years
ago, Lyra Davis left behind a world of wealth and privilege and the
people she loved most in the world, unable to reconcile the
expectations of her celebrated family with the longings of her own wild
heart. Now she lives quietly among a community of expatriates on the
isle of Capri, slowly, carefully learning to live fully for the first
time, flourishing in the friendship of a singular man who recognizes in
her a kindred spirit.
Granddaughter of the reigning doyenne of
Newport, Rhode Island, wise beyond her sixteen years, Pell Davis is
poised to take her place at the pinnacle of society. Yet she and her
young sister still long for the mother who ran away from them when they
were children so that they could be raised by the father they adored.
Pell knows that Lyra felt she loved them best by leaving. But with her
father now dead and her sister veering dangerously into fantasy, she
will travel across an ocean to find the mother she remembers and the
deeper truths they all need so desperately....
Lyrical,
unforgettable, Luanne Rice's new novel unfolds against a background of
timeless beauty, as an unlikely love affair reshapes the meaning of
devotion and three generations of women resist the pull of memory and
tradition to find a new way forward.
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Smash Cut by Sandra Brown
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Publisher: Simon & Schuster Publication Date: Aug 11 2009
ISBN-10: 1416563083
ISBN-13: 978-1416563082
Romantic SuspenseCheck Availability
THE PRINCIPALS: Paul Wheeler: CEO of the Wheeler Enterprises
empire, is shot dead during an armed robbery. Julie Rutledge: A savvy,
cultured, and attractive Southern woman, was hand-inhand with Paul
Wheeler at the time of his death. Derek Mitchell: A defense lawyer of
renown, he goes to the mat to make a case for every client -- and
headlines for himself. Creighton Wheeler: The prodigal nephew of Paul
and a playboy with a passion for movies. Even those closest to
Creighton can't be sure when he exits reality and enters the fantasy
world of films.
STORYBOARD: The murder of Paul Wheeler has
all the elements of a blockbuster: family rivalries, incalculable
wealth, and a prominent man dying in the arms of his beautiful
mistress. It's a case that could earn Derek Mitchell even greater star
power. When the Wheeler family approaches him about defending Creighton
for his uncle's murder -- even before he's charged -- he jumps at the
chance.
Although Creighton has a rock-solid alibi, Julie is
convinced that he is responsible for Paul's murder. Caught in several
lies, and keeping secrets from Derek and the police, Julie is suspected
of casting blame on Creighton to cover her own crime. Meanwhile, Derek
fears he's being duped...yet he burns with jealousy when he thinks of
Julie with her late lover. But the more Derek learns about Creighton,
the more he doubts the young man's innocence. And hiding in a squalid
motel under an assumed name is the one man, a career criminal, a
killer, who knows the truth.
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That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
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Publisher: Knopf Publication Date: Aug 4 2009
ISBN-10: 0375414967
ISBN-13: 978-0375414961
Literary Fiction Check Availability
Griffin
has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father's ashes in
the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling
on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he
and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter
Laura's best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past,
since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents' respite
from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned,
in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for
their lives together that's now thirty years old and has largely come
true. He'd left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of
New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to
in vain; they'd moved into an old house full of character; and they'd
started a family. Check, check and check.
But be careful what
you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of
this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the
present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year
later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura's,
on the coast of Maine, Griffin's chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he
contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he
and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have
happened?
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep
introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged
man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled
one, his daughter's new life and, finally, what it was he thought he
wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless
throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with
others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its
ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this
Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
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Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury
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Publisher: Doubleday Canada Publication Date: Aug 18 2009
ISBN-10: 0385666195
ISBN-13: 978-0385666190
Literary FictionCheck Availability
Maria Jameson, an Edinburgh academic, is passionately involved with a
younger man and married to a steady, reliable husband with whom she has
two children. She wonders: Is it possible to love two men at the same
time? And must she feel guilty? For answers she reaches across
the centuries to the life story of George Sand, the maverick French
novelist whose many lovers included the composer Frederic Chopin. While
researching a book about Sand - and enduring bitter disappointment -
she moves toward understanding how best to live her life. This
is a richly detailed novel that explores past and present, the personal
and the historic, and sensuality, responsibility and the mystery of
love. Sharply insightful, it is a deeply engaging examination of two
women's minds, hearts and homes.
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Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre
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Publisher: Random House Canada Publication Date: Jul 28 2009
ISBN-10: 0307357066
ISBN-13: 978-0307357069
Literary Fiction
Check Availability
From an award-winning writer and one of Canada's foremost broadcast
journalists, comes a deeply wise and moving novel that explores the
guilty minds and spiritual evasions of Catholic priests.
Father
Duncan MacAskill has spent most of his priesthood as the "Exorcist" -
an enforcer employed by his bishop to discipline wayward priests and
suppress potential scandal. He knows all the devious ways that lonely
priests persuade themselves that their needs trump their vows, but he's
about to be sorely tested himself. While sequestered by his bishop in a
small rural parish to avoid an impending public controversy, Duncan
must confront the consequences of past cover-ups and the suppression of
his own human needs. Pushed to the breaking point by loneliness,
tragedy and sudden self-knowledge, Duncan discovers how hidden
obsessions and guilty secrets either find their way to the light of
understanding, or poison any chance we have for love and spiritual
peace. |
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
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Publisher: Touchstone Publication Date: Aug 18 2009
ISBN-10: 1416563687
ISBN-13: 978-1416563686 Historical Fiction Brother turns on brother to win the ultimate prize, the throne of
England, in this dazzling account of the wars of the Plantagenets. They
are the claimants and kings who ruled England before the Tudors, and
now Philippa Gregory brings them to life through the dramatic and
intimate stories of the secret players: the indomitable women, starting
with Elizabeth Woodville, the 'White Queen'. The White Queen
tells the story of a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who,
catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret
and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her
exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons
become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for
centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is
still unknown. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa
Gregory explores this most famous unsolved mystery of English history,
informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable
storytelling skills. With The White Queen, Philippa
Gregory brings the artistry and intellect of a master writer and
storyteller to a new era in history and begins what is sure to be
another bestselling classic series from this beloved author.
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Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
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Publisher: Mariner Books Publication Date: Mar 11 2009
ISBN-10: 0156033682
ISBN-13: 978-0156033688
Historical Fiction In The Aeneid, Vergil's hero fights to claim the kings daughter,
Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself
never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a
novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome
was a muddy village near seven hills. Lavinia grows up knowing nothing
but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to
marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by
the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner that she will be the
cause of a bitter war and that her husband will not live long. When a
fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her
destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not:
the story of her life, and of the love of her life. Lavinia is a book
of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer
working at the height of her powers.
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